Mrs. Hawkins suddenly addressing him with these words," Mr. Roberts, don't you think Mrs. Roberts expects you down stairs?" He made no answer: she continued, "I thought she looked rather down-hearted about their coming; had n't you better go down? she 'll feel better if you do."

66

Perhaps I had," he said, and he went down to the drawing-room. The room was brilliantly lighted; every countenance, to the melancholy man seemed to beam with a joy in which he had no share, and which he feared his entrance would disturb: more than all, Fanny, his young and lovely wife, who usually when he saw her looked sad and dull, now appeared to him radiant with enjoyment, as well as beauty. As he was gazing at her, she raised her eyes, which before had been fixed on her cards, and as they met his sorrowful look, her face grew crimson red, and in her embarrassment she trumped her partner's trick.

"Is this the way," said her partner laughing, "you treat your best friends? Mr. Roberts you have a strange wife; I hope she does not treat you as she does me. I advise you to look after her; she is not to be trusted."

Mr. Roberts sighed unconsciously: Fanny heard it; that low sigh was louder to her

conscience-stricken ear than all the confused din of gay sounds with which, to another, the room would have seemed full. Fanny tried to rally her spirits, but in vain; she played worse and worse, and lost the game. It seemed as if the whole company experienced a sudden and unaccountable fall of spirits after Mr. Roberts' entrance: they separated sooner than usual, on the plea that they must keep good hours, as Mr. Roberts' father retired early to rest.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Poor Ophelia!

Divided against herself and her fair judgment."

HAMLET.

POOR Fanny, who seemed born for gaiety and joy, as truly as the rose is created for beauty and fragrance, was fast withering in the chilling and ungenial atmosphere in which she was placed. As her misery increased, she grew more and more pettish and unreasonable, and, when it was too late, repented of some unjust or passionate expression, which she was guilty of towards her husband, and which he passed over unnoticed, or with a sorrowful rather than upbraiding look. He appeared like a person whose bosom labored with some painful secret, which he could not communicate, and the evil effects of which he would fain suffer alone.

In answer to Amy's letter, Fanny repeated her conviction that her husband did not love her, and her unutterable misery at this belief.

SKETCHES OF MARRIED LIFE. 237

She declared that it was impossible for her to speak freely to him. She related to Amy the whole story of the whist party, in nothing extenuating herself, but, on the contrary, calling herself a monster, and, by that means, trying to relieve her conscience, which blamed her for not acknowledging her small but real fault at first, and her subsequent untruth to her husband.

Upon the subject of the reduced circumstances of her friends, Fanny said, "O that we, too, were poor! that I had to work for my daily bread, to labor for my sweet Willy! That might please his father, perhaps. If I were to minister to my husband with my own hands, perhaps he would notice me as much as he does his shoe-black. At any rate, bodily labor might divert this terrible pain in my heart. I want to be in motion all the time. I try to run away from myself. I tell the coachman, when I take a drive, to go as fast as he will. 'Where, ma'am?' he asks. 'I don't care,' 'I answer. He returns in season for dinner, for his own sake. I meet my husband at table. He asks me where I have been. I answer, I do not know; that the coachman can tell him, but that I don't know the names of roads and

places where I go.

speak again during

Perhaps he does not dinner, unless Mrs. Hawkins makes an effort at conversation; and then I say something either to make my husband angry, or to make him laugh; but all in vain. He does not love me enough to be angry with me, and is too unhappy to laugh. I laugh, and make strangers laugh. My head is full of all sorts of vagaries. Every thing takes the horrid form of a savage jest in my mind. Most of all, peace of mind, love, and joy, are jests to me. People call me witty; but it is all reckless misery. The one thought, that my husband does not love me, presses so on my poor heart! and O, dear Amy, my head is so dizzy! Don't you be angry too, Amy; if you are, tell me so; anything I can bear but this terrible silence. If my husband were to speak in a voice of thunder, I should prefer it to this awful silence. Pity me, I am so unhappy. Yours, FANNY."

Soon after Fanny had despatched her letter to Amy, her husband entered the room. She felt strangely shocked at the solemn sadness of his manner, far greater, even, than was usual to him. He sat down on the sofa,